


Amplitude

by RecklessDaydreamer



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: M/M, Sleepless in Seattle AU, one sided long distance convo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 01:46:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11795874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecklessDaydreamer/pseuds/RecklessDaydreamer
Summary: amplitude, n. the farthest away you can be on a path that keeps pulling you back to where you started. see also: amplitude modulation (AM) radio.(or: Sleepless in Seattle, Jupeter style.)





	Amplitude

Hyperion City sleeps with one eye open.

There are loud nights full of fireworks and sirens, and there are ordinary nights with a hazy tinge of whiskey around the edges, and there are nights like this— nights when Juno sits in his car on a stakeout, radio tuned to some late-night channel, and headlights flicker in the rearview mirror. There and gone. There and gone.

Just like a few people Juno could name.

He straightens his legs as much as he can in the driver’s seat. It doesn’t help, actually might have made the cramp worse, but it’s been hours since this stakeout started and he’ll take anything at this point.

Juno thinks about calling Rita, just for something to do, but decides not to bother. Chances are she’ll hang up on him when the inevitable commercial break ends, or they’ll get drawn into an argument over something pointless and he’ll miss the guy he’s stakeouting. Staking out. Either way, O’Flaherty will be pissed if Juno loses this guy— disgruntled former exec, or something—and so he sits in silence, eyes fixed on the grimy alley.

The radio spits static as the oldie that was just on grinds to a halt. “We’ll be back after a brief commercial break,” the unnecessarily peppy announcer says brightly, and Juno resists the urge to slam his head into the dashboard. Goddamn ads.

He reaches for the lighted dial, skipping through channels. An ad for Aegis Insurance. Another for NorthStar’s new flick. A third for the start of the professional laser tag season. Juno gives the dial another twist. Upon hearing yet another overly excited voice, he almost switches channels again. Almost.

“—and he’s been different ever since he came back!”

It can’t be.

“I see,” says someone else. “He hasn’t told you anything?” A warm, concerned voice.

“Oh, Mista Steel keeps himself to himself. But he looked just like Olly Arnolds at the end of _Love Long Lost_ — _such_ a good stream—”

Goddamn, it really is Rita.

“For those of you just joining us,” the host says, “I’m Dr. Paloma Castor of Network Hyperion’s Advice Hour, currently taking your questions.”

Juno grabs his comms and hits the speed dial for the office. It rings once, twice, and then stops. A recording of Rita shrieks, “WE’RE BUUUUUUUUUSY!”

Right. Since she’s on the line with Dr. Whoever.

“If you’d like to comment, you can call in. Now, I don’t think I quite follow. You say your boss disappeared for two weeks and returned looking like a tragic hero?”

“Yes!” Rita says. “He left with this nice man, called himself Agent Glass, who said he was a Dark Matters agent—”

“Your boss was kidnapped by _Dark Matters?!_ ”

“No, no, he wasn’t actually a Dark Matters agent— I could tell right away— but the _point_ is Mista Steel came back _alone!_ Without an eye! And he’s been _different_ ever since, Dr. Castor, and I don’t know what to _do!_ ”

“Just forget it,” Juno says aloud to the radio. “Don’t call stupid advice shows. It doesn’t matter, Rita, don’t worry about me.”

But of course she can’t hear him.

Juno sits back and waits for this nightmare to be over.

 

There’s a bar down on Comet Street called the Starhauler. Kaiser Gold is no stranger to its type— dim, dusty, more likely to sell vinegar than wine. He’d rather be drinking something classy in a downtown saloon, but he has an appointment in the secret sub-sub-basement of the Starhauler, and so he sits at a back table and sips a mediocre glass of gin and tonic.

The bartender sets down her rag and turns to the radio that hunches among the glass bottles. “Damn Neptunians,” she grumbles. “Clogging up the airwaves with thrice-damned Neptunian blues.” ~~~~

“I like Neptunian blues,” slurs one of the bar’s few patrons.

“Then you can go somewhere they play Neptunian blues,” the bartender snaps. “Just a hint, Charlie— _not in my bar_.”

After a minute of skipping through channels, hard rock and news from Calypso and a smooth Venusian jazz reminiscent of Kaiser’s childhood, the bartender settles on a talk show. She has to angle the radio’s antenna in just such a way to keep it from dissolving into static, but once she does, the voices come through clearly.

“Has your boss said anything about this— _friend_ of his?” the host asks. Relationship troubles, then. Kaiser takes a slow sip of his drink and eyes the trapdoor to the sub-sub-basement, running over all his preparations in his head.

“Well, I hacked the cameras in his building—” does he know that voice?— “but I don’t think Agent Glass came through the door.”

Peter— no, Kaiser carefully does not pay attention.

The caller continues, “I only saw them leaving. And Mista Steel had that face he makes when he’s _too tired for this shit_.”

The man at the back table lifts his glass to his lips, but does not drink. Keeping up appearances.

“And you say they were— in love?”

“Dr. Castor, when you’ve watched as many streams as I have, you _know_.” It’s said quite earnestly.

“This is a tricky situation,” the host says. “I don’t suppose I could speak to your boss myself?”

“Well, he’s out on a stakeout right now,” Rita— it must be Rita— says, “but I can connect his comms.” Past the host’s vague exclamation, Kaiser hears quick typing and then a shrill ring. Peter hopes— _Kaiser_ wonders, with absent curiosity, whether anyone will pick up.

The insistent ringing stops abruptly.

“Hacking my comms is illegal,” Juno says, a billion miles away.

 

“You never mind when I do it to suspects,” Rita shoots back, and Juno has to fight the urge to hang up right then and there.

“I’d like to talk to _you_ ,” Paloma Castor tells him.

“Yeah, I know.” Feedback squeals, and Juno quickly turns the radio off. “I’ve been listening.”

“Your assistant says you’ve changed since you disappeared.”

The cyber eye pulses gently, scattering soft sparks across Juno’s vision.

“She’s worried about you,” Castor says.

“She’s said.”

“You haven’t listened.”

Juno groans. “Why am I talking to you, anyway?”

“She’s a doctor, boss,” Rita pipes up.

“Yeah, right. I bet doctor’s her first name.”

“It’s Paloma, actually,” Castor interjects.

“Look,” Juno says, sharper than he maybe meant to, but it feels good to snap. “There was a dry spell. Happens to everyone. That’s all. I’m fine.”

“Your assistant doesn’t seem to think so.”

Juno doesn’t deign to respond.

“Would you tell me? What happened, I mean?”

“Come on, Mista Steel,” Rita pleads.

It’s late— no, it’s very early. Cars glide by only occasionally, brief streaks of light. There and gone. There and gone.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Juno says, feeling the lie on his tongue.

 

“Nothing to tell,” Juno says, distantly, voice crackling over the boxy radio’s speakers.

“Poor sap,” the bartender muses, drawing herself a glass of something dark and foamy.

Kaiser Gold broods over his gin and tonic. Peter Nureyev is tense as a tripwire. The man at the back table sets his hands flat to keep them from shaking.

Nothing to tell. No, there was never anything for Juno to tell. Not _I love you_. Not _I can’t stay._

Not _goodbye_. It doesn’t matter, not a bit, that Juno is the only person on any planet who knows Peter Nureyev.

The man at the back table focuses very hard on being who he has to be right then. Kaiser Gold drinks gin and tonic and fences priceless relics. Kaiser Gold has never been to Mars. Kaiser Gold doesn’t recognize the voice on the radio.

“Who was he?” the host coaxes.

Juno’s sigh rattles in the dusty corners of the bar. “No one in particular. Doesn’t matter. I left him.”

There’s a subtle emphasis on _I_ and _him_. Not noticeable to anyone else, perhaps. Peter hears it and thinks, _both of us were liars in the end_.

His lies were delicate, misleading, slowly stripped away to perfect honesty. Juno’s lie was—

it’s easier to tell a lie when part of you thinks it’s the truth.

“Do you think you did the right thing?” The radio host. Calm, concerned. As though it’s all some simple spat, something to kiss and make up.

Kaiser Gold sits at a back table, almost vanishing into the dusty shadows. Peter Nureyev wonders, wonders, wonders, and he waits with bated breath.

 

“Do you think you did the right thing?”

Juno says, careful, reckless, “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s right anymore. I’m not some— knight in shining armor, or whatever.”

In the sudden quiet, he hears the pulsing beat of an Uptown club, the swish of cars, the low hum of Hyperion City’s engine heart. Nights and days. There and gone.

Castor says, “One last question, and then I’ll let you get back to your stakeout. If you could talk to this man right now— tell him anything— what would you say?”

Juno stares at the radio. He’s not going to answer. But— what _would_ he say? If Nureyev was sitting in the passenger seat, soaking Juno’s car with his damn cologne?

 

Peter sits in a seedy little bar and wonders if he wants to know. He’s never loved anyone who wasn’t a liar in the end.

 

Juno’s about to say something to the tune of “that’s my business, why am I talking to you anyway” when he sees motion in the alley he’s been watching for hours. A dark figure climbs onto a waiting hovercycle and kicks the engine alive with a roar. Juno slams into gear and hits the gas, shooting after the disgruntled-exec-or-whoever. “Sorry,” he yells in the vague direction of his comms, “gotta go—”

 

Kaiser Gold doesn’t think much of that. Peter Nureyev thinks it’s hilarious. In a sad, dark way. “That’s all you had to say,” he whispers. But Juno didn’t even say goodbye.

On the radio, Rita hangs up in a flurry of excited shouts and rapid typing. The host stops mid-sentence, then says, “If you’re just joining us, I’m Dr. Paloma Castor on Network Hyperion’s Advice Hour. We’ve just heard from someone with regrets in his past, but the future is wide open. I’ll try to take as many of your comments and questions as I can in the rest of the hour…”

Kaiser gets up and goes to the bar to pay for his drink and whisper the password to the sub-sub-basement in the bartender’s ear. He has a job to do, and after that, who knows? There’s an entire galaxy to see. Places to go, people to meet…

Peter Nureyev is only thinking of one.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hey i'm @swallowtailed on tumblr, come say hi!


End file.
